# Airlines charging extra for "large" fliers. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 20, 2002, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073 "2002-06-20T15:25:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2002, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/141 "2002-06-29T21:52:43Z")
OK, let’s throw out a few more scenarios here: What if a heavy person wants to travel with a thin person who doesn’t mind “sharing” a part of the seat. Should they have to buy 3 seats between them? What about a heavy person and a child? What about those 2 heavy women-why couldn’t they buy 3 seats between them? What happens if a heavy person is stopped at the gate and has to purchase the second seat "on the spot"and the flight is fully booked-is it fair to the passenger that gets bumped? Does the bumped passenger have the right to volunteer to be cramped in order to keep his original travel plans? Why don’t they make people with long legs buy the seat in front of them also so that the person 2 rows ahead can recline? I am not saying I agree or disagree with the Southwest policy-just throwing out some ideas. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/142 "2002-08-02T20:33:45Z")
… now the other side has been heard from. [Attorney sues Delta over sitting next to an overweight customer…](http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/news/stories/20020801/topstories/341688.html). This may turn into a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation for airlines… Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Truth\_Seeker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5fc32e/32.png) [@Truth\_Seeker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truth_Seeker)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2002, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/143 "2002-08-04T20:06:13Z")
> **[The Onion | America's Finest News Source.](https://www.theonion.com/)** > > The Onion brings you all of the latest news, stories, photos, videos and more from America's finest news source. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/144 "2002-08-05T04:16:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by LurkMeister \* > \*\*OTOH, I also regularly travel with a friend who is larger than I am. He needs a seatbelt extender, but has never been charged for a second seat. When we fly together, we usually take the window and aisle seat of a three-seat row, and hope the flight isn’t fully booked so no one has to sit between us. I don’t remember this ever being a problem in the past, which may be because we usually fly at off-peak times (midweek and Saturday). \*\* My friend and I recently discussed plans for a trip in December, and because of this SWA controversy he decided that he did not want to fly SWA. Since it’s easier if we fly together, SWA lost two round-trip flyers. My wife and I still booked a flight on SWA for later this month, however. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/145 "2002-08-05T05:21:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dr. Lao \* > \*\*This seems unfair, but if I got on a flight where there were plenty of empty seats, do you think they would let my brother tag along for free? \*\* No, but they will let me put my feet up on one, or even stretch out across three, if they are open. This seems the more valid comparison. > [@](#): > > originally by zen101 > I do think that there should be no more “kids fares” on air travel as they do take up a seat and often infringe on my space as well. Whoa! There are airlines with kid fares? Which ones? I gotta switch airlines. Since my son was 3 years old I’ve had to pay for a full fare seat for him, as every airline I’ve been on has said that there is no special rate for kids. ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/146 "2002-08-05T06:08:19Z")
**Jodi** and **Sailor** - great posts. I fully sympathise with how humiliating and awkward on a daily basis it must be to be obese. But I also believe that in the vast majority of cases obesity is **NOT** a disability. It may be much, much harder for some people to keep to a healthy weight, they may have slower metabolisms, but to compare obesity to people who are born blind, deaf, lose limbs in accidents, are tetraplegic, paraplegic - to my mind that’s just sick and selfish. I am severely short-sighted. If you add up the amount of money I’ve spent on contact lenses, fluid, glasses over the past 17 years, it would probably add up to quite a few extra aeroplane seats. If you project what it’s going to be for the rest of my life, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more (possibly chartering Concorde). Few of us are born perfect - for cosmetic or health reasons we try to alter or enhance bits of ourselves - but what we do do is adopt personal responsibility for those things and pay for them ourselves. Yes - I deplore SWA’s refusal to give double airmiles. If you buy two seats, you should get double miles. Yes - I deplore their refusal to give two dinners. If you pay for two seats you should get the food for each of them (hell those meals are only worth about a dollar). I do appreciate their decision not to charge for the extra seat if there are spare empty seats on the plane. Incidentally - they only do this for obese passengers, not for people carrying cellos, for example. They still have to buy two seats every time. So all in all, I respect SWA’s decision. It’s been an excruciatingly difficult time for the airline industry recently and we should support it rather than boycott it. If you want to see small, no-frills airlines go out of business, then you should take a look at what happened to airfares in Australia when the the dominant duopoly airlines forced out smaller airline after smaller airline. Hopefully Virgin Blue is now there to stay. Profit margins are tiny on no-frills airlines, especially when oil prices are high and insurance is rocketing. Why should they lose several hundred dollars - probably the equivalent of a week’s pay for one or two staff members - because someone is fat and demands double the space for free? ---
**Author:** ![noely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e19b73/32.png) [@noely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/noely)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/147 "2002-08-05T13:06:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pldennison \* > \*\* > > Of course not, for obvious safety reasons. But so what? That doesn’t have anything to do with making a person who **cannot** fit into one seat pay for the other seat that they take up. If a person needs two standard-sized seats (and I, too, wish the goddamned seats were bigger to begin with) to sit in, they should pay for both seats. Simple. \*\* i have to say…i kinda agree with pl hear. its a pretty straight forward issue. hell, people wouldnt allow smoking on airplanes, so why should we have to put up with been crammed like sardines. i mean those planes a small enough as it is.sorry fellas for the comfortability of the masses its quite a simple solution. the only other solution, which is quite sadistic, and not very nice,…would be to put all the obese passengers in a special area, kinda the same principle as a smokin area in restaurants. hey dudes, i never said you’d like it. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![noely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e19b73/32.png) [@noely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/noely)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/148 "2002-08-05T13:22:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SisterCoyote \* > \*\*[tangent] > By the way, it is eminently arguable that it is possible (and healthy) for certain overweight people to “just lose the weight.” For many people weight loss is not a matter of simple discipline; many of those overweight people you decry as lazy are extremely fit. > [/tangent] > > \*\*The frustrating thing for me about this is the fact that they will be charging said overweight people the extra seat even in cases when the flight is not booked. The last time I flew, Southwest, I had an entire row of three seats to myself because there were so few passengers. If I had met their criterion for being too big, would it have been fair of them to charge me double? \*\* yes!😛 maybe they could make up for your inconvienience by being extra nice to you;) ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2002, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/149 "2002-08-05T21:30:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by istara \* > **Yes - I deplore their refusal to give two dinners. If you pay for two seats you should get the food for each of them (hell those meals are only worth about a dollar).** The only food you can get on Southwest is peanuts and soda (trail mix and juice, crackers and water, etc.), and they’ve always let me have a second helping even though I only occupy one seat. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/150 "2002-08-06T08:02:55Z")
“Shafer said there were two seats in the row and he did not want to cause a disturbance on a plane so soon after Sept. 11. He said there were only three empty seats on the flight. They were taken before he could move” If the 3 empty seats were taken, wouldn’t 3 more seats have opened up? Or did 3 people materialize out of thin air? ---
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2002, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/151 "2002-08-06T23:14:30Z")
\*\*Binary \*\* - > [@](#): > > I am a little rusty on this, so forgive me if I only get the gist here (I have been out of college a while now). There was a philosopher named Lawrence Kohlberg (at least I learned of him in a philosophy class) that proposed 6 stages of moral development ranging from fear of punishment (level one) to universal ethical principals (level 6). > > I suggest that this debate is mired somewhere around level four, which was called the law and order stage. Pretty ok, but I think that we can do better. Carol Gilligan, “In a Different Voice…” "Kohlberg, (1969) in his extension of the early work of Piaget, discovered six stages of moral judgement, which he claimed formed an invariant sequence, each successive stage representing a more adequate construction of the moral problem, which in turn provides the basis for its more just resolution. The stages divide into three levels, each of which denotes a significant expansion of the moral point of view from an egocentrentic through a societal to a universal ethical conception. With this expansion in prespective comes the capacity to free moral judgement from the individual needs and social conventios with which it had earlier been confused and anchor it instead in principles of justice that are universal in application…Kohlberg (1971) also identifies a strong interpresonal bias in the \*\* moral judgements of women, which leads them to be considered as typically at the third of his six-stage developmental sequence.\*\* At that stage, the good is identified with “what pleases or helps others and is approved of by them.” (emphasis mine) I don’t mean to criticize your principle argument - to keep the discussion on a more abstract, universal plane…but the Kohlbergian theory of justice is problematic at best and doesn’t really help your case. From someone who probably never leave university, 🙂 aurelian ---
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2002, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/152 "2002-08-07T01:22:34Z")
\*\*Binary \*\* - > [@](#): > > I am a little rusty on this, so forgive me if I only get the gist here (I have been out of college a while now). There was a philosopher named Lawrence Kohlberg (at least I learned of him in a philosophy class) that proposed 6 stages of moral development ranging from fear of punishment (level one) to universal ethical principals (level 6). > > I suggest that this debate is mired somewhere around level four, which was called the law and order stage. Pretty ok, but I think that we can do better. Carol Gilligan, “In a Different Voice…” "Kohlberg, (1969) in his extension of the early work of Piaget, discovered six stages of moral judgement, which he claimed formed an invariant sequence, each successive stage representing a more adequate construction of the moral problem, which in turn provides the basis for its more just resolution. The stages divide into three levels, each of which denotes a significant expansion of the moral point of view from an egocentrentic through a societal to a universal ethical conception. With this expansion in prespective comes the capacity to free moral judgement from the individual needs and social conventios with which it had earlier been confused and anchor it instead in principles of justice that are universal in application…Kohlberg (1971) also identifies a strong interpresonal bias in the \*\* moral judgements of women, which leads them to be considered as typically at the third of his six-stage developmental sequence.\*\* At that stage, the good is identified with “what pleases or helps others and is approved of by them.” (emphasis mine) I don’t mean to criticize your principle argument - to keep the discussion on a more abstract, universal plane…but the Kohlbergian theory of justice is problematic at best and doesn’t really help your case. From someone who probably never leave university, 🙂 aurelian ---
**Author:** ![TeaElle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@TeaElle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeaElle)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2002, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/153 "2002-08-07T03:39:42Z")
Coming back on topic, there is now a lawsuit pending, based largely on the biggest problem with SWA’s policy – the inherent arbitrary nature of the rule. [A brother and sister who were not required to purchase extra seats on the first half of their round trip were told that they **would** have to purchase extra seats on their way home](http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=KPLN0VC0K015ECRBAEZSFFAKEEATIIWD?type=topnews&StoryID=1195091). Different airport, different gate agents, different rules? I don’t think so, and that is what’s going to make SWA wish that they’d thought twice before making a public statement about this policy. If they don’t have any means to ensure that different employees aren’t going to make different judgments about the same passengers, then they simply must rework the policy. ---
**Author:** ![TeaElle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@TeaElle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeaElle)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2002, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073/154 "2002-08-07T03:47:20Z")
Ouch, that was messed up. Auto-smileys ought not work inside url tags. Anyway, [you can read the Reuters story here](http://makeashorterlink.com/?C52332571). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airlines-charging-extra-for-large-fliers/115073.md?page=7)